A Pox on America

In December, when hospitals in Atlanta and Richmond announced that they were opting out of the federal smallpox vaccination plan, opinion leaders reacted as if the physicians had enlisted with Al Qaeda. The Washington Post argued that "there are reasons, moral and medical, to deplore the decision of those doctors who refuse in this manner." A New York Times editorial called the decision "deplorable."

In the months since, hundreds of other hospitals, asked to employ a famously risky vaccine against a disease that was eradicated twenty-six years ago, made the same "deplorable" decision. But by late March, when a nurse, a nurse's aide and a National Guardsman all died of heart attacks following vaccination, the hospitals' resistance seemed less deplorable than prescient. Once news of the deaths broke, at least ten health de-

partments temporarily suspended their smallpox programs. Under the Administration's plan, half a million emergency room workers were supposed to have been inoculated by late February. But as of March 28, only 29,584 doses of vaccine had been administered. The White House's immunization blitz is a bust.

Subscriber Login

User Name

Password

Subscribe Now!

The only way to read this article and the full contents of each week's issue of The Nation online is by subscribing to the magazine. Subscribe now and read this article -- and every article published since for the past five years -- right now.

There's no obligation -- try The Nation for four weeks free.

• Get The Nation at home (and online!) for 68 cents a week!
• If you like this article, consider making a donation to The Nation.
• Reprint this article. Click here for rights and information.